One Nation is not only taking Labor's seats

The standard account of One Nation's rise in Victoria is that it hurts Labor. One Nation polls around 22–25% of the primary vote, the first-preference vote¹ , and because Victoria counts preferences — a full distribution in every seat — most of the seats One Nation doesn't win go to the Coalition rather than to waste² . On the one count where that has been measurable this cycle, it held: at the Nepean by-election in May 2026, One Nation polled 24.52%, finished third, and its preferences split **77.5% to the Liberal**³ .

The other half of the question — whether One Nation takes seats from the *Coalition* — is where the measured evidence points, and it is concentrated in the rural seats the Nationals hold.

One Nation wins on a Coalition primary collapse

Where One Nation has actually won, it did not win by transferring better: it won because the Coalition's own vote fell away.

The contests One Nation has won or nearly won — Farrer , Secret Harbour and South Australia
Contest | One Nation primary | Mainstream right primary
Farrer (federal, May 2026) | 39.53% (+32.93) | Liberal −31.00
Secret Harbour (WA, Aug 2026) | 39.1% (+30.7) | Liberal −7.8
South Australia (Mar 2026) | 22.9% (+20.3) | Liberal 18.9% (−16.8)

At Farrer, One Nation's primary vote alone — 39.53% — was larger than the Liberal and National primaries combined at 22.19%⁴ . That is not a preference story. It is the Coalition's vote leaving before preferences are counted at all.

The transfer asymmetry, measured

Farrer is the only Australian contest in the record where Liberals, Nationals and One Nation were all on the ballot and the full distribution is published. It shows something no statewide poll can: the two halves of the Coalition do not treat One Nation the same way.

Preferences to One Nation, by source: Liberals 58.99%, Nationals 69.13% — Farrer by-election, 2026.⁴

Ten points is a large gap in a contest decided by transfers. It means that in a National-held seat, a One Nation challenge faces an electorate more willing to complete the move than the Liberal half of the Coalition would be — and those are precisely the seats where One Nation's strongest demographic fit lies. The Nationals' own MPs have said it in the plural: One Nation is "100% our biggest threat" and "the candidate is kind of inconsequential. It's the brand now"⁵ .

What the seat models don't say

Both published seat models put the Coalition on 39 of the 88 seats — six short of a majority — even while it leads the primary vote. YouGov's modelling in July put One Nation on 17 seats; RedBridge's in June put it on 12¹ . Neither reports, seat by seat, whether those seats come out of the Labor column or the Coalition column. A reading that applies the same statewide change to every seat assumes One Nation wins nothing at all¹ ; the seat simulations elsewhere put One Nation's range at 1 to 27 seats across 90% of runs⁶ . The difference between the bottom and the top of that range is mostly a question of which parties One Nation is taking from, and a model that cannot produce One Nation as a finalist in a seat cannot answer it.

What would settle it

• **The nominations.** Victorian nominations open on 4 November and close on 9 November 2026. Whether One Nation runs a candidate in every seat, or leaves the Coalition alone in some, is the observable signal of whether the two are competing or coordinating² .
• **The count itself.** Victoria publishes a full distribution of preferences in every district. After 28 November, the question of whose seats One Nation's wins came from is a matter of arithmetic, not modelling² .
• **The money, as a proxy for organisation.** One Nation polled around 23% all year while disclosing a single $5,000 donation in its Victorian state account against Labor's 217 donations worth $634,000 and the Liberals' 65 worth $220,000⁷ . A party cannot convert a primary into a preference position without how-to-vote cards and booth labour, and that costs money.

The risk to the Coalition in the rural seats is that One Nation takes its primary vote outright; the risk to Labor is that it splits the right and hands the preferences back. Both are live, and which one dominates will differ seat by seat.